We’re grateful to everyone for contributing to our reading study last month on the topic of deepening our meditation throughout the day. Your comments were very encouraging and reminded us how much we have in common as a community. Thank you!
This month, we’re continuing our focus on meditation, with a special emphasis on effort during meditation. We’ll also enjoy inspiration and hopefulness for ourselves and others through a video study of Easwaran’s commentary on Gandhi and his spiritual teachings.
What’s a Video Study?
BMCM retreats in Tomales offer video studies as a way for retreatants to connect with Easwaran’s words as individuals and as a community. This is much like the reading studies we’ve done on the eSatsang, during which we read, reflect and share comments and questions on Easwaran’s writings.
In the same way, this month we’ll watch the video “Gandhi, Man of God” in short sections every week. We encourage you to summarize Easwaran’s words and then share any impact this has on your practice. This is a really helpful way to put Easwaran’s message together as a community – there is so much packed into each sentence!
This video talk “Gandhi, Man of God” is just over 30 minutes long. We’ve divided it into four sections so that we can review each part together over the next four weeks. Here are the time-stamp sections we recommend for each week:
Week 1: 0:00 – 8:30 minutes
Week 2: 8:30 – 17:54 minutes
Week 3: 17:54 – 25:03 minutes
Week 4: 25:03 – 31:32 minutes
This week, Easwaran provides an introduction into how we might experience Gandhi’s writings and offers us practical suggestions for being “perfect in effort” in a new way every day in order to deepen meditation. After watching this week’s video excerpt, please share your reflections in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you, and by offering your ideas you’ll inspire others to do so, too! You might share:
an idea or two that really stood out to you – one you’d like to remember
an overall message from Easwaran that resonates with you in some way.